Voters give mediocre marks to 2012 candidates and media coverage

The Pew Research Center asked voters to grade the major players in the 2012 campaign and nobody’s going to be on the Honor Roll. Obama got a C+, Romney a C, the pollsters a C+. At the bottom of the list is the press, which got a C-.

All of the grades were worse than the marks handed down by voters after the 2008 election.

Only 38 percent of voters say issues were discussed sufficiently, while 51 percent say issues were discussed less than usual. In 2008 these numbers were reversed.

Voters were displeased by the barrage of negative campaigning and mudslinging. In this year’s campaign 68 percent of respondents said there were more attacks than usual, while just 19 percent said there were fewer.

Still, a strong majority (87 percent) stated they were sufficiently informed about the candidates and issues to make their choice. Two-thirds of the participants said the debates were helpful in informing them about the candidates. On the flip side, campaign commercials were mostly regarded to be unhelpful (by 72 percent).

Voting process and its accuracy

Pew found that the majority of voters is both satisfied with the voting process and confident with the impact of their vote. Most voters (73 percent) say that the voting process in their area was managed “very well” and 20 percent say it was managed “fairly well.”

Things get worse when it comes to the accuracy of the vote: 68 percent say they are very confident that their own vote was accurately counted. Not bad, but a 5 percentage point decrease in comparison to 2008.

However, confidence in the vote count nationwide has been slipping. Just 31 percent of voters say they are very confident that the votes across the country were accurately counted. That’s a 12 percentage point drop from 2008.

News sources and press coverage

Also in 2012 television remains the primary news and information source for voters. Among the cable TV channels Fox News leads over CNN and MSNBC. On network TV, it’s almost an even race among NBC, ABC and CBS.

When it comes to the evaluation of the press coverage, it’s sort of a mixed bag. Seventy percent of Republicans said the press has too much influence, while 63 percent of Democrats said the press had the right amount of influence. (Wonder who won?)

Sixty-nine percent of Republicans say the press treated Mitt Romney unfairly — were they watching Fox News? — while fewer than 20 percent of Democrats said either candidate was treated unfairly by the media.